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Police arrest five suspects in racial incident
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Assault victim Andrew Budikusuma holds a police document after making a report to the Jakarta Police on an attack perpetrated by several people at a Transjakarta bus stop last Friday. (JP/Callistasia Anggun Wijaya)
P
olice on Thursday arrested five suspects in a possibly racially motivated assault that occurred at a Transjakarta bus stop in Senayan last Friday night.
“We arrested five of Andrew’s attackers at 4 a.m. in their houses in Tambora, West Jakarta. We are still hunting for two others,” the head of the Jakarta Police’s mobile detectives unit, Adj. Sr. Corm. Budi Hermanto, said in Jakarta on Thursday.
Andrew Budikusuma, a Chinese-Indonesian, said he boarded a bus at the West Kuningan stop at 8:30 p.m. His attackers boarded at 9 p.m. and immediately glared at him, shouting “You’re Ahok, aren’t you?” referring to Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, who is also Chinese-Indonesian.
When the bus reached the JCC bus stop in Senayan, several of the suspects allegedly attacked Andrew and tried to drag him off the bus. Andrew hit one of his assailants with a glass bottle that was within reach, which apparently deterred the others.
After the attack, Andrew went to the emergency department at Siloam Hospital in Kebun Jeruk, West Jakarta, to treat an injured lip and a bump on the head.
Andrew reported the incident to the Jakarta Police on Tuesday.
The five suspects were identified as DS, 21, HBP, 26, MA alias Aweng, 31, SR, 17, and AR, 21. They are accused of violating Article 170 of the Criminal Code on assault, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment. (sha/bbn)
